First Quarter 2018 Review

I’ve been working on finding my rhythm in terms of writing for the blog. About a month ago, I decided I’d write 2 posts a week. Tuesdays posts are about numbers, something concrete like the mortgage or net worth or grocery spending.

Thursday posts are a bit more introspective. I write about my values, feelings, thoughts about something connected with money.

The new pattern I’d like to establish starting today is creating Quarterly Updates! Yaaaay! The first post of April, July, October, and January will be accounts of changes in, well, accounts. We’re starting in the first quarter of 2018.

The categories are those that are important to me. The “Net Worth” is the total of all the other categories (from Mortgage to Cash listed below) minus the house, the cars, the student loan debt and Mr. POAI’s business accounts.

Category

Jan 1

March 31

Percent + or – for first quarter

Net Worth

281,107

288,164

2.51%

Mortgage

68,645

66,135

-3.66%

Pension Purchase

111,731

115,260

3.16%

403B

67,000

68,298

1.94%

TIAA

21,324

21,296

-0.13%

Cash

13,970

9,445

-32.39%

I don’t want to not include the house in the Net Worth though because the numbers are significantly larger with it, and I can use that encouragement.

My assessment of the quarter…overall, I am very happy with the mortgage going down 3.66% and the net worth going up. I’m not sure how good of an increase 2.51% is in terms of the net worth since this is my first quarterly report, but I’ll take it.

The cash decrease is understandable, since we’ve had some house repairs and medical bills. The 0.13% decrease in my TIAA account is disappointing since I want the number to only go up, up, up. At least the decrease is very small.

I’m not sure what to think about the 1.94% increase in the 403B. Again, since this is my first report, I’m not sure how typical that is, but I think I’m happy with it.

Do you create quarterly reports? If so, what do you include? What’s a “win” for you in terms of % increases or decreases?